Today's consumer electronics provide many packaging challenges. The increased functions packaged within cell phones, portable computers, digital cameras, personal video players, and personal data assistants (PDA's) must be robust, inexpensive, and manufactured in very large volumes. Any deficiency in the design or manufacturing processes will quickly ruin the success of any new device. The semiconductor devices used in these products must be able to provide high manufacturing yield while producing millions of units per month.
In the production of the semiconductor devices, such as large scale integration (LSI), more complicated circuits are being fabricated and the number and type of functions are also increasing with improvement in the degree of integration. Because of the ability to provide increased functions, the semiconductor device has come to require more external terminals, and thus, the numbers of pad electrodes provided on a semiconductor chip and the number of leads that form the external terminals of a semiconductor device have increased in a corresponding manner. For example, the number of external terminals has reached the hundreds in a logic semiconductor device. An example of such a multi-lead semiconductor device is a quad flat package (QFP) type semiconductor device. Since a number of leads are provided on all four sides of a package body for sealing a semiconductor chip in the QFP type semiconductor device. Such a device is suitable for forming multi-leads in that the total spacing around the semiconductor device can be utilized effectively when the semiconductor device is packaged on a product substrate, such as a printed circuit board (PCB).
Any deficiencies in the components that are assembled on the product substrate will quickly make themselves known when high volume manufacturing is essential to a products success. Failed devices caused by internally shorted leads, open or cracked leads, or leads that can move within the package body are devastating in high volume manufacturing.
Further, since the number of elements formed on a semiconductor chip has been increased and since these elements are operated at a higher speed, the generation of heat from the semiconductor chip has also increased. A semiconductor device in which heat radiation performance has been improved for the purpose of coping with this problem may use a heat spreader. In this semiconductor device, the heat radiation performance of the semiconductor device is improved by installing a heat spreader on a semiconductor chip. Without a heat spreader, a high percentage of the heat developed in the semiconductor chip must be transferred through the package itself to the product substrate. This transfer of heat may further stress the design integrity of the semiconductor device and its member components. Any manufacturing flaws or cracks in the leads of the semiconductor device may cause a manufacturing failure or early life failure.
Thus, a need still remains for an integrated circuit system with integral inner lead and paddle that can improve manufacturing yields and reduce the cost of manufacture. In view of the industry demand for less expensive and more reliable semiconductor devices, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is critical that answers be found for these problems. Additionally, the need to save costs, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures, adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.